


a rebel invisible

by ihopethatyouburn



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24953140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihopethatyouburn/pseuds/ihopethatyouburn
Summary: "She loved her daughter, and she loved defending America. She loved defending America, and she defied CIA orders in favor of a joyride around Afghanistan with a GRU agent. Sometimes one truth had to win out over the other, but usually she had no trouble holding onto two opposing facts, one in each hand.Currently, in Moscow: she’s in exile, and she’s feeding America valuable intelligence. She loves Yevgeny, and she’s lying to him."Winter 2020, 2.5ish years later.
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Yevgeny Gromov
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	a rebel invisible

“Doesn’t it bother you? The lying?” Maggie asked Carrie once during her first year at the agency. Carrie was running around her living room getting ready for a meeting with the first asset she’d recruited all on her own, a staffer in the Israeli embassy who thought she wanted to network to find a job in the state department, and Maggie was leaning against the door jamb watching her. “It’s like you’re betraying these people’s trust.” 

Carrie shook her head no without needing to consider her answer. “I’m not usually lying that much.”

Maggie looked confused. “But don’t you wear a disguise and give people fake names?”

Carrie found the word _disguise_ a little melodramatic, even though it wasn’t wrong. “Yes, but other than that. I say things that are at least partially true.” 

“What do you mean, partially true?”

“It has to do with the amount of detail, usually. So I might say that I grew up in the DC area, or that I like to run half-marathons. Nothing specific enough to identify me, but something that makes me seem like a real person. Someone who’s trustworthy,” she explained.

Maggie laughed a little at _trustworthy,_ but she nodded. “That I get. But what about the actual lying?”

“That’s worth it to me,” Carrie shrugged. Lying was thrilling for her, a burst of energy rather than a twinge of guilt, allowing her to decide on the fly what childhood anecdote or traumatic backstory would work best to reel in an asset. Saul had congratulated her once on being a chameleon, eager and able to change identities at will. 

“Some people start to feel like they’re losing themselves if they’re bouncing between assets,” he warned. “They stop understanding what’s real. I want you to be careful.” 

That was never an issue for Carrie, who had her freshly diagnosed bipolar disorder to thank for her single-minded pursuit of everything she was after. She was always more capable than most of holding two contradictory ideas in her head at once. Nicholas Brody was a terrorist, and she, a CIA agent, loved him. She loved her daughter, and she loved defending America. She loved defending America, and she defied CIA orders in favor of a joyride around Afghanistan with a GRU agent. Sometimes one truth had to win out over the other, but usually she had no trouble holding onto two opposing facts, one in each hand. 

Currently, in Moscow: she’s in exile, and she’s feeding America valuable intelligence. She loves Yevgeny, and she’s lying to him. She doesn’t have to moralize or justify it to herself; she doesn’t feel like she’s at fault, because many things can be true at once. And she thinks if Yevgeny ever found out, he’d feel betrayed but ultimately he wouldn’t be too angry. He knows that it’s foolish to expect she’d abandon America altogether, and he’d understand that she had to at least try to develop assets. It’s what any respectable spy would do. If anything, it’s his fault for trusting her.

Granted, she had light surveillance on her for the entire first year she was in Moscow, even when she was just walking down the street to the supermarket. Sometimes she’d shake off the agent following her just for fun, as practice, but usually she pretended to ignore the man with the tiny earpiece watching her pick out a loaf of bread. She had to play the long game, establish herself as a non-threatening figure so she could move slowly towards building her own network. And somewhere along the line, against his better judgement, Yevgeny started to believe her.

+++++

After her book is released, her publisher sends her on a mini book tour around western Russia. There was interest in Berlin and Paris and Copenhagen, but it proved much more complicated than she’d imagined to leave the country with her asylum status. Yevgeny tried to lobby the Kremlin to loosen her restrictions, but his efforts were largely meaningless because she doesn’t work for the GRU and isn’t allowed any of the protections that come with employment. Carrie would also bet that the Kremlin wants to eliminate the risk of her setting up meetings with old contacts in Germany.

The book tour is the perfect backdrop to meet with sources, since she talks to hundreds of people per day and her schedule is so chaotic it’d be almost impossible for anyone to monitor it from the outside. She maps out every event venue before she gets there, executes flash drive hand-offs in the bathroom, and then goes out to speak to a crowd about her book that mercilessly decimates the past two decades of CIA leadership. She’s helping America, and she’s betraying America. Her cover helps maintain her image in the press as a scorned agent and allows her sources to sleep at night, allows them to keep coming back.

Her intel comes in slow drips, usually a single document or email or bank transaction at a time. There’s never too much information packaged together at once in case it gets intercepted, always hidden among decoy press releases about financial regulation or new environmental discoveries in soil samples in Siberia, boring enough that no one would want to scan through all the documents if they picked up the flash drive accidentally. 

In the outer reaches of Moscow, in a neighborhood she’s never been to before, she finds a rare bookstore about twenty blocks from the more commercial shop where she’s set to do her press later that evening. The shop owner is a stooped balding man in his sixties, who seems thrilled that she’s chosen his store over the Barnes and Noble equivalent she’s supposed to be in. He clocks that she’s American in just a few seconds from her serviceable but limited Russian, but gives no indication that he recognizes her face. She’s been on a couple morning news segments, but always in English, and this man seems like the type who reads a hard-copy newspaper and listens to the radio for his more up-to-date news. She’s wearing a black knit hat and keeps it on while she browses, glad that it’s winter and she can hide her hair. 

He seems lonely and wants to make small talk; he introduces himself as Alexei and asks her in heavily accented but fluent English if she ever misses America. Carrie stares into his eyes as she pauses, trying to read his intent. GRU officers constantly asked her similar questions when she first arrived in Russia, and it was always a mixture of mockery and challenge: _It’s too bad you can’t go home; I dare you to try your best to contact someone, because we’ll be watching._ This man seems genuine, though, going on about his granddaughter who just started university in London and who won’t stop calling to ask every single family member about their day. 

“You’re so far from home,” he commiserates. “You don’t miss it?”

“Sometimes,” she answers. “But I have a home in Russia now. So there are bright spots, too.”

Alexei nods, his eyes softening at her. He doesn’t push, but he seems to understand. 

In the weeks following her book event, Carrie keeps returning to the store, claiming to be a nut for rare editions of Dostoyevsky, running her fingers over hundred-year-old leather-bound copies of _Crime and Punishment_ and _The Idiot._ Eventually, she asks about international shipping options, since she has an old professor back home in America who would be just thrilled to receive a few rare books he’s had his eye on for years.

She keeps a locker in the corner of a nondescript chain gym a mile walk from her apartment, where she has a membership under a fake name and doesn’t have to take an ID photo. It’s a perfect spot for dead drops, when she gets messages that are too difficult to deliver in person, and she stashes a bag of hats and scarves for when she’s trying to avoid detection.

She should probably feel more guilty about deceiving Yevgeny, but she surprises herself with the ease with which she’s able to meet a source on a run in the park and return sweaty to their apartment without even a twinge of regret. She’s never sloppy, of course, knowing that the GRU could throw surveillance back on her at any moment if they wanted, but she’s not nervous.

She’s used to keeping some part of her life separate from the people she loves, and how is this any different? She’s spent her entire adult life compartmentalizing her personal and work selves, and at this point it feels natural. If anything, the risk is what gets her out of bed in the morning, the feeling of her heart in her throat as she inputs the combination on her gym locker, as she seals up a bubble mailer and sticks an international label on it, addressed to Professor Rabinow. In a way, it helps Carrie breathe easier about how emotionally vulnerable she is to Yevgeny, that he knows details of her life she’s never shared with another person; he may know her darkest secrets, but he’ll never know everything.

+++++

Fall starts threatening to turn to winter by mid-October, and Carrie’s out at yet another book party on a night when Yevgeny arrives home from his latest trip to Afghanistan. He goes regularly every few months or so to maintain relationships and recruit new assets, usually dividing his time between Kabul and Islamabad. The Taliban under Jalal Haqqani is even more militant than it was under his father, a twisted show of dominance that’s a tale as old as time, and the Russians try to mitigate disaster where they can.

Yevgeny’s asleep already when Carrie stumbles into their bedroom, happy drunk from the copious amounts of vodka always passed around at these parties like water. It’s one of the few Russian stereotypes she’s found to be true. He’d texted her earlier from the car on his way home from the airport: _I’m almost home, when will you be back?_ She hadn’t seen it until half an hour later, already a little deeper into the vodka than was probably professional, but needless to say, the publishing world has different rules than the intelligence community. She responded _Will be here awhile longer, sorry!!! Be home as soon as I can!_ Probably surmising the alcohol behind her multiple exclamation points, he’d simply responded _Have fun. xx_

The light from the hallway illuminates his face, and he stirs at the brightness. 

“Carrie?” he mumbles. 

“Hey,” she stage whispers, not quite modulating her voice properly. She leans into the corner created by the dresser against the wall, buttressed by two solid surfaces, so she can balance enough to undo the straps on her shoes. She’s never been great at walking in heels, and the alcohol only compounds it. Finally free, she dumps her shoes on the floor by the door and climbs into bed next to Yevgeny, still in her cocktail dress. 

“I missed you,” she says as she kisses him hello. “This apartment is too big for one person.” 

He’s warm from being wrapped in the covers, and Carrie lays her head on his chest to savor it.

“I missed you too.” They lay comfortably silent for a moment.

“Sorry for waking you up,” she apologizes into his shirt.

“It’s okay.” He scratches her back lightly. “I just fell asleep. I thought I could wait until you got back.”

“How was Kabul?”

“The Taliban is confined to the tribal lands for now. It’s been a safe few months, but one of my assets told me Jalal is getting restless. I may have to go back soon to see what I can offer to keep the peace.” 

Carrie can feel the vibration in his chest as he talks, and it’s soothing. He always tells her a little more than he probably should about his work; it’s usually information that will be printed in newspapers soon enough, but she gets the breaking news as it happens.

“Is Jalal still working with Tasneem?” Carrie asks.

“She hasn’t been able to control him for awhile,” Yevgeny says darkly. 

Carrie nods against his chest, all too familiar with what an out-of-control Taliban leader looks like and very glad that she doesn’t have to deal with it. 

“How was your party?” Yevgeny asks. 

“It was fine,” Carrie sighs. “My agent introduced me to about three hundred people, all of whom tried to pitch me a new book idea or asked me about my most horrific memories of being a spy. The really enterprising people did both.” 

He laughs and kisses the top of her head. “So, it went about as well as they always do?”

“Pretty much,” she agrees. “But they had some really good infused vodka, so,” she giggles involuntarily, “it wasn’t all bad.” 

“I’m glad.” Carrie can hear the smile in his voice.

She props herself up on his chest and kisses him again, properly this time, humming happily as he tucks her hair behind her ears. She straddles him to get a better angle and his hands start roaming eagerly, one skimming the length of her bare thigh as the other fumbles around to unzip her dress.

+++++

In addition to getting her boyfriend back, Carrie is glad Yevgeny’s back in Moscow for her own selfish work reasons; every time he’s gone, she’s a little extra paranoid about surveillance. So far she’s been in the clear, but she obviously can’t afford to have even one slip-up. She avoids scheduling meet-ups or dead drops when he’s out of the country unless it’s unavoidable; he’s usually not gone for more than a week each trip, down from her first winter in Moscow when he was called to Kabul or Islamabad to manage the precarious peace for a few weeks at a time. 

Back then, she’d been deep in the first few chapters of her book, going to sleep with splitting tension headaches from staring at a computer screen all day, sometimes realizing once the sun went down that she’d forgotten to open the curtains. Writing alone suited her; she’d recently moved into Yevgeny’s apartment before they rented a new place that was theirs, not his, and she was glad he wasn’t around to raise his eyebrows when she sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room to give herself a change of scenery, frantically typing fragments as they came to her. She’d printed out each chapter as she finished it, laying everything out on the rug in sections so she could see the book as a whole, identifying unattended areas in her timeline.

Now, two winters later, when she’s alone in their apartment she feels on display for the whole city to see, extra conscious of the floor-to-ceiling glass. And shocked as she is to discover it, considering that for most of her adult life she was never sure if a long-term relationship was realistic or advisable for her, she misses having another person around to watch the news with, who will yell at her for leaving her dirty clothes on the bathroom floor after she takes a shower. Their relationship is much more normal than she ever could have predicted; when he’s gone, he texts her when his flights take off and land, and asks her what she did that day, not in an accusatory tone but because he genuinely wants to know. It’s surprising, but sweet.

At the beginning of November he drags her to an opera, her penance for making him go to jazz concerts. She knows he secretly enjoys the jazz, and she doesn’t mind indulging his opera whims because she likes seeing him happy. While they’re in their seats before it starts, Yevgeny tells her all about the composer and the different recordings he has of this opera, which he says he’s been playing at home lately but Carrie doubts she could identify it from anything else he listens to. 

She doesn’t really get the allure of buying absurdly expensive tickets to see people sing songs that Yevgeny knows most of the words to, but he paid and he likes sharing his favorite things with her. He tries to explain that he’s excited about the interpretation of the piece, the direction and the acting choices and the chemistry between the actors, but she keeps getting stuck on the fact that he knows all the words in order and wants them to stay that way. 

The opera is in Italian, and of course it’s a dramatic love story, and she’s fuzzy on a lot of the details because she spaces out for the first fifteen minutes and doesn’t read the subtitles on the chair in front of her. Yevgeny seems thrilled, though. When he looks over to gauge her reaction, she smiles and squeezes his knee in support.

During the second intermission, he buys them both drinks from the bar in the lobby and leans against the wall as he sips from his glass. Carrie tries to take stock of the theater surreptitiously, scanning the huge carpeted staircase leading up to the dress circle, the two aisles separating the seats in the orchestra, the metal number plates nailed onto the railing at the back of the house for standing room, making a mental floor plan for the future, in case she ever has a meet scheduled here. God knows Yevgeny would return as often as she’ll accompany him, and the multiple intermissions and multiple women’s lounges make it easier to avoid detection.

“So,” Yevgeny prods. “Do you hate it?”

“I don’t, actually.” She surprises herself with her answer. “I didn’t know opera was so… athletic. It’s really impressive.” 

“Isn’t it?” he grins. “The most exciting part is watching the soprano decide if she has enough energy to hit her high notes.” 

“That’s the most exciting part?” 

“It’s fun. It’s like a game.” He tries to justify it, and she tries to understand.

“I’m not following the story, though.”

He waves his hand. “The story doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that there’s a couple who love each other and fight a lot. Relax and see how you feel about it.” 

“Okay,” she decides to take his advice.

The lights dim just then, signaling the end of intermission. 

“Come on.” He weaves his fingers through hers as he leads them back to their seats. “The third act is my favorite.”

She does enjoy herself more once she stops trying to figure out the plot, ignoring the translation in front of her entirely. It’s more like jazz now that she’s not worried about the logic or structure: there’s just a clear emotional need being identified and satisfied. 

Her revelation comes not during the multiple love arias in act three, but after the opera is over when they’re waiting on the sidewalk for their car to arrive. It’s colder than Carrie expected, and she steals Yevgeny’s scarf, wrapping her arms around him to shield herself from the wind. As he throws out hopeful ideas about the next opera they’ll go see together — a famous soprano is coming to Moscow this summer — she’s suddenly hit with a wave of emotion that throws her off balance as she exhales hard into the frosty air. 

She and Yevgeny have a future together. A real one, one that she can clearly imagine months down the line, stable enough to spend hundreds of dollars on opera tickets for an event six months ahead of time without a second thought. 

She’d resigned herself years ago to the idea that she’d be alone forever, so much so that it wasn’t even a tragedy anymore, just a cold hard fact. She treated it with the same emotional weight as her middle name — she didn’t love it, particularly, but it was something she was stuck with, and in a practical sense it didn’t make a difference to her on a day-to-day basis. Carrie Anne Mathison, born 1979, mother of one, never married, that’s all what her medical files said. Instead of seeking stability, she craved danger to an insatiable degree, explained by neither her mental illness or her profession individually but somehow together they combined to create a refrain that still played in the back of her head but over time had quieted to white noise, _alone alone alone._

She’d accepted that this particular immutable part of her personality was bound to send all decent men running eventually. Jonas managed to hang on for more than two years, but even a year and a half in she’d struggled to imagine a realistic future, any date more than a few weeks away appearing blurry and unformed in her mind’s eye. She’d been improvising the whole time, and it wasn’t sustainable. She knew that early on, even if she’d fooled herself into introducing him to her family and letting Franny grow to love him. She’s pretty sure Jonas knew too, even if they both woke up every morning happy to ignore the crumbling foundation of their relationship. She was content with Jonas, but every time he dug a little deeper into her past she was convinced he’d jump up and walk out the door permanently. And eventually, she was right; she’d been surprised at the way he ended things, but not that he wanted to. 

Yevgeny, on the other hand, is intimately familiar with the pathology of an adrenaline junkie and accepts it, encourages it, and stops her only when she’s teetering on the edge of mania. They’re wired the same, is the only way she can really describe it, the same ruthless commitment to service and patriotism. When the Taliban starts taking Pakistani prisoners and inviting retaliation, Yevgeny jumps straight onto a plane to help de-escalate the situation with his assets in Jalal’s outer circle. He tells Carrie he’s leaving in twelve hours, and she nods yes, of course, are you sure you can’t get on an earlier flight?

She loves him, both obviously and improbably. And she’s lying to him. It’s the part of her that craves danger, that elevates her self-importance to a grandiose degree, that recognizes that she was a perfect sacrifice on behalf of the CIA: betrayed, blacklisted, banished. Cruelly, she’s uniquely positioned to uncover vital intelligence, a position that’s only necessary because she gave up an asset who was so spectacularly embedded that no one had questioned her loyalty in thirty years. Carrie is in Russia to rebuild networks and repent for all the horrors that unfolded at her hands. Along the way, she also found the most real relationship she’s ever had.

+++++

Eight months after Carrie sends Saul an advance copy of her book, she finally gets a package in return. In past months, he’d confirmed receipt of her messages, from his rare bookstore owner to her rare bookstore owner, an ancient code from when she was in her first year at the agency. _Professor Rabinow would like to thank you for your package, since he wasn’t able to find this book at the library._ The first time, her bookstore owner hadn’t been thrilled about having to pass along the message; Alexei groused that he wasn’t an answering service, but he had a message from America for her, something about a library. She’d snapped to attention at Saul’s key word and made him repeat the message twice, verbatim. 

During this particular visit, Carrie gets a package from Saul, a copy of _Notes from Underground._ She extracts the message from the spine locked in her guest bathroom when she knows Yevgeny is at work. It has writing on both sides. The first side is business, letting Carrie know that the US has meetings scheduled with Turkey’s minister of defense due to the strength of her intelligence. The back of the note simply reads, _Maggie wanted me to tell you, if I had a way to contact you, that she read your book._ There’s nothing else, not a word about whether she liked or hated or understood it, but that’s Maggie in a nutshell, so logical, taking in all her facts first and forming an opinion later. 

It’s not much, but Saul’s note is thrilling, acknowledging that all her schemes and fake names and extra miles walked to avoid detection were worth it. She’s the proudest she’s felt since coming to Moscow — finishing her book had been personally satisfying, but she saw it primarily as a stepping stone to establishing assets. This diplomatic meeting feels more like a global triumph, that she was able to keep genuine nuclear threats at bay, at least for now. Even in exile halfway across the world, she can still help her country. 

**Author's Note:**

> Big and little things that inspired me while writing: an interview with Joe Weisberg, former CIA officer and creator of The Americans, who was asked if the lying bothered him and he responded no, the fucked up ways the agency hurt people bothered him and that’s why he quit; the montage in Little Women (2019) where Jo lays out all her book chapters on the attic floor; this Basquiat print that I strongly believe Carrie would have hanging in her apartment 
> 
> https://store.moma.org/prints-artists/framed-prints/basquiat-trumpet-framed-print/139412-139412.html
> 
> The title is a line from Shameika by Fiona Apple, my favorite song of 2020.
> 
> Thanks for reading as always!


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